The overall goal of this research is to examine the development of auditory speech perception skills in young profoundly hearing impaired children. Although the training of auditory speech perception skills has long been considered an important component in the treatment of childhood deafness, little research has focused on the effectiveness of training procedures. Recent advances in the surgical treatment of childhood deafness through cochlear implantation have highlighted the need for the critical exmaination of issues related to speech perception training. A series of experiments will be conducted focusing on the relationships between speech perception training and speech production training at various levels of linguistic meaningfulness (i.e., nonsense syllables vs. real words in isolation vs. real words in sentences). The process of speech perception is inter-dependent with those of speech production and language. However, in the management of deaf children there is an unfortunate tendency to dissociate rather than integrate the three. To better understand speech perception in relation to speech production and language, the ability of profoundly hearing impaired children (ages five to seven years) to perceive and produce speech stimuli will be examined as a function of type of training (i.e., perception/production vs. perception alone) and level of linguistic meaningfulness of training stimuli. In all experiments the effects of training on performance will be evaluated using speech stimuli varying in level of linguistic meaningfulness and using tasks which tap different linguistic/cognitive levels. The results of the studies will be used to develop intervention strategies which integrate, rather than dissociate, speech perception training with speech production and language development.